This post discusses the accessibility features of PDF files using the program Adobe Acrobat Pro 9. This post is the second post in our Acrobat Pro 9 series of posts. Users of Acrobat can have the document read aloud to them if the document is “accessible”. Some people cannot read and others cannot see well enough to read.
Most of the commands you will be using to work with accessibility are under the Advanced menu. Click Advanced -> Accessibility and you will see nine different items under this menu. First, go into the Setup Assistant. This is a wizard. If it is Set to all accessibility options then it’s good to go for our purposes.
If we were to open a PDF that is “clean” and already configured correctly, then when we run the Quick Check and Full Check we will not get any errors in the reports. If we run the Quick Check we may not get any errors, but the document may still not be clean, so it is important to run a Full Check.
File Properties
First, check your file properties. Go to File -> Properties. A large mult-tabbed document opens. At the bottom of the Description tab there is the property Tagged PDF. If it says No, then the document will never pass any accessibility test.
Word Styles Become PDF Tags
If you create a PDF by exporting to PDF from within Microsoft Word, and you have used Word styles, such as Heading 1, Heading 2 and so on, those automatically become your tags. This is good and it can save you time.
Order
When you have a PDF open in Acrobat Pro 9, right click the left taskbar and choose Order. This shows objects. It does not show tags. Under Order you will see that the pages of the PDF are grouped. Under each page you have all of the objects that are numbered. Find an image in your document. You have to to set the Alternate Text property in order to pass the accessibility test. Images need to have some text attached to them so that people with vision difficulties can have a description of the image. How do you set this property? Go to Tags. Find the image. Right click on it and select Properties. Tags have accessibility properties. Add some text to the Alternate Text property.
Repairing Accessibility with Tags
If you run a full test, and it does not pass, how do you fix it? For example, if you have some text that is not tagged, how do you add a tag? Below is a screen shot of part of a course in Udemy.com called Adobe Acrobat Pro 9. Here we can see he has Order open and there is no tag for the title at the top: “Modern Fencing”.
How do we fix this? When you look at the full report you can see “Inaccessible page content”. Click the “Inaccessible page content” link and Adobe will highlight the text “Modern Fencing”.
To fix it, go to Advanced -> Accessibility -> TouchUp Reading Order. A dialog box opens. Click the button at the top left. Then select your text “Modern Fencing”. Be sure to include all of the text otherwise it won’t work. Click the Heading 1 button because this text is a heading.
Now, you will probably need to re-order things. If so, click the Show Order Panel button at the bottom. Re-order as necessary. You just need to drag ad drop. Once it is in order, save the document. Repeat these steps, starting with another full check.
Read Out Loud
If you go to View -> Read Out Loud you can activate this feature. However, it will not work unless you have gone though these above steps to ensure that your document passes the full check. When you are in Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 you can click on a section of text and have it read aloud to you, but the user of the final PDF will not have that ability without a full pass of accessibility.